


don't have a soul like you do

by blue--phantom (twilightscribe)



Series: i'll be the blood (if you'll be the bone) [10]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Alternate Universe - Vampire, Drabble Sequence, Introspection, M/M, One Shot, Senses, Triple Drabble, Vampires
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-22
Updated: 2016-12-22
Packaged: 2018-09-11 01:30:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,497
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8947792
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twilightscribe/pseuds/blue--phantom
Summary: An examination of Hanzo's enhanced, vampiric senses, and how they relate to one Jesse McCree.





	

**Sight**

His vision is the easiest of his senses to recognize as having changed.

Before, Hanzo had been an excellent marksman with his bow. After, he is at the peak. He could strike a bird down from the air blindfolded. He knows. He tried it once.

But he can see farther than ever, in perfect crystal clarity. He sees details that most people would miss, a fray in a coat, a loose thread, the finest stitches of the embroidery on a sleeve.

Hanzo can focus on something like nothing else, memorize the details of a person’s appearance even if they’re standing on the other end of a block from him. Anyone would call it impossible, but his very existence defies all belief. He’s no longer human, so why should his senses be limited to such an existence?

With Jesse, he sees the crow’s feet that have formed at the corners of his eyes. The slight laugh lines that have formed. The way that his face has weathered from so many years spent out in the bright sun. His skin is warm, light brown, and he takes great pleasure in touching it.

He notes the honeyed warmth of Jesse’s eyes, the way that they soften whenever he looks at Hanzo. His shy smile, how he ducks his head and tugs his hat down to cover his eyes and that slight dusting of pink in his cheeks. Hanzo sees all of it and memorizes it. He refuses to forget a single thing, a single moment, of Jesse.

The way that the sun catches in Jesse’s hair, turning it so many different shades of brown and blond and red that Hanzo’s doesn’t even have names for all of them. How he looks after they’ve been intimate, that lazy smile that runs him right through.

**Hearing**

Now, Hanzo can hear a whispered conversation in another room as though he’s sitting beside those having it.

It makes him an even deadlier archer. He no longer needs to even _see_ his target (because if he can see you, you’re already dead). If he can hear them, if he knows the lay of the land, then he can pinpoint exactly where they are. Doing so takes a lot of focus, requires him to ignore his other senses, but Hanzo has learned how to remain aware of his surroundings.

It’s very difficult – if not impossible – to take him by surprise any longer. He can hear conversations easily from across a large street; can hear the creeping of assassins, the beating of their hearts in their chests. It is frequently the latter that gives them away, combined with the sounds of their breathing.

A single shot. He can hear it echo, hears their death cry as though they’re standing right next to him.

Frequently, he has to tone his hearing back. Hanzo has learned how to filter out the noise of a crowd, of being surrounded by hundreds of different conversations. For so long, he had been alone; it had been easy.

Now, though, he’s no longer alone. Now, he has Jesse. He has a partner – a mate. Someone to love, live for.

He listens to the sound of Jesse’s heartbeat, lets it lull him into sleep like he’s let nothing else in the past several hundred years. In six years, it has become the most precious sound to him. He times his days around it, lets it remind him: _I am not alone. I am worthy_.

Sometimes, when Jesse sleeps, he simply rests his ear against his chest and listens to it echo inside of Jesse’s chest.

**Smell**

Hanzo has decided that cities are the absolute worst place to be for his kind.

He makes this decision even though they’re the easiest places for vampires to blend in, for no one to notice them. In a city, it’s easy to blend into a crowd, to find potential victims, and to be little more than another eccentric citizen.

But they absolutely _reek_.

Cities stink worse than an open sewer did when he was human. To him, everything is amplified. He can smell everything within at least a three or four street radius and the stench of it is awful. The smell of horses, sweat, perfumes and colognes, _people_. Sometimes, it’s just too much for him.

Bars are the worst. He avoids them like the plague, though he finds himself in more and more of them since beginning to travel with Jesse.

Speaking of Jesse, he doesn’t wear cologne, but still carries a pleasant smell with him. All Hanzo asks is that if he smokes, he do it downwind from Hanzo. He loves Jesse – would easily die for him without a thought – but he absolutely cannot stand the stink of a cigar, no matter how fine Jesse insists it is.

Hanzo appreciates that, though he complains about the inconvenience of it, that Jesse does so. He even washes his clothes often, to keep the stench of smoke from sinking in too much.

Even with that, he still smells faintly of smoke. Something deep and woodsey that reminds Hanzo a little of his childhood, faint as those memories are. He smells like the soap he favours, and something that Hanzo can’t put a name to. He likens it to sunshine; something bright and full of life.

He would know Jesse’s scent anywhere. It’s distinctive and burned into his memory.

**Taste**

Before, he would drink anything. More or less.

Now, though, Hanzo can taste each note in the alcohol he consumes. The vinegar in poor quality sake becomes almost overpowering, makes him wrinkle his nose. It overpowers everything else – the sweetness and fruity notes. It’s unappetizing.

Unfortunately, all that’s available outside of Japan tends to be of a lower quality. He trains himself to taste past the vinegar, to ignore the taste as he once did. It’s much more difficult than it should be. Of all his sense, he cannot tone down or ignore his sense of taste.

Aside from his… diet, alcohol is all he drinks. Food carries too strong a taste and he gets no nourishment from it. Whatever it is that keeps him alive, all it requires is blood. Animal or human, it isn’t selective, but human comes with a rich taste that he cannot put words to. Within it, he can taste life. With the blood, comes memories, thoughts, emotions. Hanzo can taste each of them.

Blood, Hanzo learns quickly, is life, and it’s that which he drinks. He takes a little, not too much. There is too much blood on his hands for him to add another life to his own.

The first time that he tastes Jesse’s blood, it’s better than even the finest sake. It comes with a rush of images: a young boy on a ranch, grinning with glee; a woman’s warm touch, soft and all that’s left of a woman long dead; a tall man with blood staining his shoulders, face full of fierce pride, him saying ‘good job’; the answering swell of joy and pride inside of him.

He feels Jesse’s love for him. Warm and all-encompassing. It reaches inside, filling a void within him he hadn’t known was there.

**Touch**

Pain no longer registers the way that it once did.

He can easily ignore injuries that would knock a human down. Even the enhanced ones that work as hunters, he has more endurance. Pain only registers when the wound would be life threatening; anything less is an inconvenience, a twinge along his senses.

Jesse shot him the first time they met. The bullet had gone clean through his shoulder and he hadn’t even flinched.

He’s well aware that it’s unnerving. Has used it to his advantage several times.

But it means that he can’t appreciate a beautiful day or the feel of cool rain on his face. Hanzo is always cold. The chill clings to his skin, has seeped deep into his bones.

He will never be warm again.

Hanzo accepted that into his first century. But he never lost the craving for it, something he feels weaves its way into the very being of all of his kind. Perhaps that’s why the hunt: trying to recapture that warmth that once was theirs. He doesn’t know, but it’s a thought – a possibility.

Maybe that was why he felt compelled to save a ragged cowboy in way over his head.

Hanzo has never regretted saving Jesse’s life. Instead, he has come to love the man like he thought he never would – how he believe he was beyond deserving. He loves the roughness of his skin, the calluses on his hands, the bristle of his beard. He loves it all.

Above all, though, he cherishes Jesse’s warmth. His easy smile. His softness and fragility that are innate to all humans. Hanzo has put himself between harm and Jesse too many times to count and he will continue to do so.

There is no existence worth living without him. Not anymore.

**Author's Note:**

>  **Words:** 1505 words
> 
> Each section is 300 words in length exactly. I held myself to writing _only_ that much as an experiment. To be honest, this entire _thing_ is an experiment and a chance to write in Hanzo's POV. I enjoyed it, so I might do it again sometime. I've let this series run away with me, so why not?


End file.
